Seven Months Post Hurricane Maria: Puerto Rico Hit With Island Wide Blackouts

Seven months after Hurricane Maria devastated the island of Puerto Rico, those on the island are struggling with blackouts once again. This latest power outage follows a series of outages in the months since Maria.

Just last week, half of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s (PREPA) customers lost power when a tree fell across a major power line. And in November 2017, San Juan and several other cities lost power at least twice due to a failure.  There’s no word on what caused this latest outage, with PREPA hoping to have power restored in the next 24 to 36 hours. According to CNN, PREPA is focusing primary efforts on getting power back to hospital and water services as well as banks and the city of San Juan.

According to Mashable, one spotlight event will go on as scheduled, though. The Cleveland Indians and Minnesota Twins are in San Juan for a two-game series and Wednesday’s night game will go forward as planned thanks to generators to power the lights at Hiram Bithorn Stadium.

All emergency systems at Hiram Bithorn Stadium have been tested just now and are fully functional. The game will GO ON. Nothing will stop us pic.twitter.com/u4jpCkjc1Q

— Carmen Yulín Cruz (@CarmenYulinCruz) April 18, 2018

The island’s infrastructure and power grid were already fragile before Maria struck in late September 2017. The storm’s lashing of the island with sustained winds of up to 140 miles per hour tossed the entire island into the dark and strained already tight resources.

Controversy has followed recovery efforts in Puerto Rico, including President Donald Trump’s somewhat disastrous response to the storm and the much-debated contract initially given to Whitefish Energy to repair the power infrastructure.

And the exact death toll from the storm is still unknown; while the official number stands at 65, this number is likely far too low, with some estimates pegging it at closer to 1,000.

Hopefully, Puerto Rico will begin to feel some much-needed relief after all the trauma the island has undergone in the past several months.

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